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My WoW Inspired Art

One of my goals for 2016 is to try and draw every day. This was inspired by @Faebelina from twitter. Her art is awesome and this is something she did for 2015. I can’t say I have managed to draw every day yet, but I have drawn a lot more often.

Eventually I’m going to redo my banner to reflect something drawn by me rather than a weird screenshot mashup. Yep. One of these days. In the meantime, I’m going to start posting some of my art. Get ready for some picture spam.

I went to college as an art major many moons ago. Digital art was in its infancy and I learned how to do things the old fashioned way…and then promptly started a career in TV that was mostly just pushing buttons.

Now I’ve come sort of full circle and I’m back to wanting to do art full time. I’m self taught when it comes to using Photoshop. I likely do things in an overly complicated or wrong manner because I make stuff up as I go. Inking in particular has always been an issue for me. I am not good with smooth lines. The eraser tool in my best friend.

I draw using a Wacom tablet I’ve had for about ten years. I generally sketch in Photoshop and then ink in a program called Clip Studio Paint (Mac)/Manga Studio (PC). I am currently coloring in Clip Studio Paint and then doing backgrounds in Photoshop mainly because I’m not sure how to get the imported inked file back to Photoshop in the right format because argh! Again, self taught noob here.

This video by Faebelina is awesome and really helped me a lot. I’m giving the link because I want you to go to her youtube channel to see it. She gives a really good basic tutorial here and is planning on making more videos. It is for Photoshop, but the principles will work for other digital programs too.

I’m going to start by showing one of the the first WoW fan arts I ever really did. This is from last Summer. I liked the armor on her hands but her face is pretty expressionless. I’m still working on that. Translating how I draw into digital is a big step for me.

Next I did a Halloween avatar. I love my main’s bat dress. You get to see two different versions with different shadows. I eventually went with the lighter one because it showed up better on twitter.

This was also Inktober and here are a few sketches I did. You can see how messy I sketch in pen. I sketch equally messily in pencil and digital pens. I am messy, Y’all!

This is a sketch that I am still working on. It is a good example of a mistake. When I was inking it, I did it wrong. Without a white background there are bits of white “paint” I used to erase mistakes instead of the actual eraser. Don’t do this kids if you are planning on painting it at some point. I’m going to fix it by completely re-inking it. Yay for projects!

These are some Christmas avatars I worked on. The drawing of my main harks back to the first picture of my DK and I’m not happy with it. Ugh…her eyebrows are so awful! I love holiday Pepe though. My DK from <Of The Queue> turned out better. This was my first use of Clip Studio Paint. As you can see, it really helped me up my inking game.

I love this drawing of my main. This is the first drawing I have done where I liked the inking. I was attempting cell shading. I’m not totally happy with the end result but I like it overall. I love her sweater and wish she could have pink hair streaks in game. Why do Pandaren get all the hair love?

This lady was loosely based on Lagertha from Vikings and a high elf. In my mind she is a half human-half high elf paladin. Mostly I was working on a different way to color because I was not happy with the cell shading I did earlier. I learned from this, but I don’t consider it to be an awesome picture. The colors are nice though.

Ok, my witch is not actually a WoW character. But I’m really proud of how she turned out and she is an elf. Why doesn’t WoW have cute elf witches? Get on that, Blizzard.

This demon hunter is my most recent work. You might notice the resemblance to my demon hunter from Inktober. I liked the pose and the idea so I revisited it. This piece used techniques from Faebelina’s awesome video. I’m still working on shading, but I am pleased with this result. I can see a definite improvement. I love her tattoos and her ear jewelry. Also Rey hair!

I’m going to keep working on my art and I encourage you to do the same no matter what your art is. I had to re-ink my demon hunter about six times. Try not to get discouraged if things go like that. Instead take a break from the piece and go back to it later. Keep practicing and try out new things. Even if something doesn’t work, you can still learn from it and do better next time. Above all, have fun creating!